Your Life Will Be Here Before You Know It

March 15, 2008

I used to be the teenager who ran away from life. If someone told me that I actually needed to make a decision about my life and what I wanted to do with it, I would find a way to not have to make an actual decision and run away. Something about having to decide what I wanted to do with my life at the age of 18 didn’t make any sense to me. I was just a kid, how the hell should I know what I want to do for a living? Why should I have to even be thinking about a career when I enter the realm of further education? So I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t finish the high school education that I had worked my ass off for years doing, I just didn’t feel as if I belonged there. I had the brains, hell, I still have the brains and I’ve been told several times that I could be doing whatever I wanted right about now–But then again, who really knows what they want? At 21 years old, I still don’t know what I will be spending the rest of my life doing, but instead of being scared or looking at my impending life as a scary thing, I find it comforting. I will always be experiencing something that I had never thought I would be doing, I will always be taking my life to new levels and in new directions and that is what I love about my decisions.

There are, however, many drawbacks to how I live my life. I had basically raised my younger sister. She will be 16 at the end of this month and when I talk to her about what she’s up to, what she spends her time doing and what she wants to do with the rest of her life, I still feel as if I am her guardian and I have to send her in the right direction. Instead of what most parents say to their children about getting an education and tackling a full-time career, I give her the facts of what happens when she doesn’t apply herself and what happens if she doesn’t get the education that she undoubtedly deserves and in risk of being called a hypocrite, which she has thrown at me many times, I give her the facts of my life and tell her how hard your life gets when you don’t have a plan or when you’re trying to figure out what you will do this year in terms of money and having to pay rent and support yourself because the truth is, that while she is only nearly 16, her life will be here before she knows it.

I wouldn’t tell anyone to go through life without a plan if they can, in fact, make one for themselves. I was incapable of making my life decisions, I wanted no part of it whatsoever and scoffed at the fact that Peter Pan is fiction. If someone is capable of making a life plan for themselves, or even a short term plan that outlines the next five years, then I would tell them to go for it and never give up on the aspirations that they had planned for themselves. While I love my life and what I do and I love my business, although I know I will not be doing that forever and will most likely embrace other creative-driven career opportunities, I know that living the way that I do is not easy by any means. With that being said, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?

For my sister’s generation, I’m talking about school. College is in fact a very lucrative endeavor, although I wouldn’t have admitted it a few years ago. It is astonishing what one piece of paper can do for your life in the world of business, even if one carrying a diploma isn’t as qualified as the person without a college education, the diploma will almost always win.

The key to making that life plan I was talking about is to think about what you’re good at. What do you enjoy doing? That is the key to your future. After that, all that is left is choosing the best school that will let you explore what it is that you like to do and turn it into what you can base your career on.

Some colleges, when trying to get through to prospective college students are making videos about the anxiety and drama that comes with college applications, getting accepted, going to campus visits and the like, which is think are insanely clever. The best ones I have found are from Kettering.

When looking more into Kettering, I found out that US News and World Report ranked Kettering University as the number one university in the nation for industrial and manufacturing engineering. It is also a great school for those looking to get into mechanical engineering.

If you’re into math and engineering, you can definitely look into US News Best Colleges and Kettering.